Obligatory Seriousness

September 25, 2008

This morning I listened to Dan Carlin's latest podcast. In the first part, he didn't have much to say and repeated himself a number of times, dragging out the point. Fortunately it was a good point. In the second part, he lost his mind, but I won't go into the second part, rather elaborate on the first. A lot of people have been mouthing off that GREED is the reason why Wall Street is having a hard slog of it these days. A lot of people are wrong.

To use Carlin's apt analogy - saying that people who run business want to make money is like saying that people in sports like to play games. Duh. That's the point. Pitchers pitch, batters bat. Salesmen sell, investors invest. The point is not that pitchers want to pitch faster or batters want to bat further, nor is it the point that sellers want to sell even more at higher prices and buyers in the marketplace want to buy even more at lower prices. The problem is when people change the rules of the game and have no real idea where it will get them. What we are seeing in the financial securities market is not the exposure of greed, nor something fundamentally wrong with capitalism or the 'absence of pure capitalism'. We are seeing what happens when the players exceed the limits of the old rules.

I don't know how many times, in pro football, the rules for pass interference have been changed, but I would think that it has been at least four times in my lifetime. At one time you couldn't touch the reciever when he's catching the ball. Now you can have one hand on him. At one time you couldn't block the reciever off the line of scrimmage. Now you can hit him once. The rules have changed because of what we have seen with extraordinary recievers and defenders. If following these rules one day results in a touchdown the might have won the SuperBowl getting called back and destroys the credibility of the referees, it would be stupid to say that the reason the game is losing confidence of the fans is because football is just too violent, that would be ridiculous. Violence is part of the game, and it is an agreed-upon level of violence with rules and supervision that makes everybody happy and professional about it. The same thing is the case with markets.

Not long ago, Wall Street changed a rule on the ability for traders to engage in a transaction called 'naked shorts'. It was something that the heads on CNBC talked about for a couple days and then it went away. The market makers and regulators are always changing rules to adjust to reality. It makes a real difference to people who play the game, and there are never any shortage of opinions. Mark Cuban, for example had this to say:

This is not a loan that has no value to you, the shareholder. You are PAID for loaning the stock. In fact, for some stocks, you are paid quite a bit. So if you own a share a stock and you take money for it being loaned out, then you have to deal with the consequence that the person who borrowed your share may vote the share. In fact, your shares may not only be loaned to someone trying to short the stock, it may be loaned out to someone who only wants toVOTE THE STOCK.

You get paid for loaning the stock. Its your job to know what rights you have to the share of stock that has been loaned out. It is your job to discuss with your broker whether or not you want your shares loaned out. If you get paid to loan the share, and its voted in a way that goes against your interests, you can scream all you want, but you prostituted your rights. You is a corporate ho.

Now what's all this business of stock loans? I have no idea. Never done it, but somewhere there are rules governing the short sale of stocks and what market makers can do loaning and trading short options and all that complexity. The point is that there are incentives to do just about any and everything with every kind of money: stock, debit, credit, loan, asset, bond, option, strip, coupon, reit, trust, fund, debenture, commodity, adr you can imagine. You can buy them, sell them, trade them, insure them, gift them, hide them, bundle them, unbundle them, hedge against their rise, their fall, their liquidity. You can place time limits on them, or remove them. And people are probably inventing new things to do with new kinds of financial instruments every damned day, like sports coaches and players are always thinking of new ways to improve their game. All within complex sets of rules that the pros and dedicated fans know something about. How do you or I know if it's cricket? Sometimes you just have to be a player to know or even have a clue.

Now I agree with Carlin, that somebody was incented to DO MORE. Well duh. Obviously there were incentives to make more people homeowners. There were obviously incentives to keep intrest rates low. Seems like an obvious combination for financial organizations to make more home loans. Was it right to emphasize this segment of the market? Of all the things that are interesting to do in the financial world, why issue more risky loans and then try to secure it with credit swaps? Why bundle loans sideways instead of longitudinally? Because that's what the people want!

Let's talk a moment about bundling sideways. I heard this on the radio yesterday and it's something I never even thought about, I'm not even sure what the technical term is called or how often its done, but it's a very cool idea.

Lets say that you are a bank, Bank of Cobbler, and you own 100 million dollars of 30 year home loans whose total value at maturity is about 105 million. Roughly 5% is the value of that bundle 30 years out. That's a mere 300 loans with an average value of 350,000 at maturity. Roughly speaking, you get 289k of debt service every month. You with me so far? Simple math, divide 105M/360. Now let's say that looking at the actual history of cashflows over the past 36 months, you are getting an average of 285k allowing for late payments, a small default rate, overhead and being conservative. Suddenly, you need to get a million bucks, like now. So you can take your loan portfolio of that 100M and then sell the next four months of loan payments to a third party. But you make a deal based on a less conservative figure. You need a million and you should be getting 289K so you bump up your loan amount to 1.1M. Your actual collections should be anywhere between 1.140 and 1.56M for those four months, so you figure you can handle the interbank loan rate of 3%. So now you have securitized off some portion of your loan portfolio - the next four months, for 1.1 million in cash. All you have to do is collect on those 300 mortgage payments and pay $33,000 in interest.

Obviously things are a little more complicated than this because you have to make determinations on which parts of these payments are interest and which are principal and rejigger your asset base vs your cash base and treat those monies with the appropriate wisdom. But you can see how easy it is to turn this tiny fragment of you loan portfolio into cash. It seems like a relatively safe bet. The problem now becomes, what exactly are your liabilities if Joe Mortgagepayer doesn't pay two of those three months, and how do you hedge that in your language on the interbank loan? There are probably some interesting rules for that, and obviously investment bankers like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs had more legal leeway than your average mortgage banker or commercial bank. I mean your average Wall Street trader does 100 million dollar deals in their sleep. What's interest on 1.1M for one quarter? Hell, they could pay that out of their pockets. Now you can imagine all the kinds of side bets that could be made with that 1.1M in cash.

The deal was that Fannie and Freddie were quasi-government guaranteed, so that a third party - say Bank of Bowen would have no problem loaning that 1.1M at 3%. Why? Because there was essentially a guarantee that the loans behind this is good money. Now I don't care what Bank of Cobbler does with that 1.1M, so long as I get my 1.133.

Anyway, I haven't come up with a way to show how that 1.1M loan leverages a way bigger amount, but it may have something to do with the way the original bundle was classified at the Bank of Cobbler. That is to say if Joe Mortgagepayer and two more of the 300 in that pile miss one payment, then Cobbler has to declare it somehow to Bowen. Let's say that during those months, that pile had to be re-graded as AA instead of AAA. Then I wouldn't have given Cobbler a 3% rate but probably 4.5%. And then I would have used the difference to buy an insurance premium. Now my insurer is on the hook for this chopped up pile of mortgage pieces in which I have an interest, and Cobbler has an interest and Fannie Mae has an interest and Joe Mortgagepayer has an interest. If I don't get my 1.133, then my insurer has to pay me, Cobbler may call Joe on his loan so he can repackage a new pile at AAA, but now I don't trust Cobbler's porfolios, and my insurer is really in the tank for the little policy premium I took against 1.133...

In all of this failure, all the players are playing by rules we may not understand because we don't get into these transactions, but they are the rules that are necessary to keep all the players interested in the game. I use the term market makers clearly here because the market is not a natural phenomenon, any more than football is a natural phenonmenon, but playing the game becomes a natural part of our culture because it is based upon innate human traits - you can call them Greed and Violence, but it's much more than that.

August 24, 2008

I got my face shaved today. Barbershop time. My barber, definitely old school, but a supporter of Obama, is now showing some more doubts. Obama's triangulation is fairly complete, and he has all the attributes of a mainstream Democrat candidate but none of the bona fides. Reverse the ticket and it's just what you would expect of a fairly good choice. If I were a democrat, I think I might pick Biden Obama. Biden Obama makes sense theoretically but Obama Biden? If you were to be one of those people who voted for Obama during the primaries, Obama Biden would not *even* be on your mind.

So basically all of the principled Leftists and Progressives get to downplay the VP position. The only consistency here is a dogged determinism against Bush's foreign policy. That's what Biden cements. It's really the last thing Obama should do - campaign on a primarily foreign policy platform, but it does moderate the whole look and feel of the OBandwagon.

Like most reasonably sound people, I made my mind up a long time ago. It didn't take me as long as this campaign has gone to pick my wife of 15 years, so I really don't understand how it is people can keep talking about it this long. No wonder we've gotten into the weeds of dueling assets.

I think the entire thing with the text message is emblematic of Obama-ness. He promises to avoid the MSM and be all young and fresh with his text message delivery of the news. Then his organization leaks it out to the MSM anyway, and the whole text message network never works, and the actual news is not groundbreaking at all, but a safe triangulated thing.

August 11, 2008

Bernie Mac was never so much Bernie Mac on television. TV wasn't ready for his genius. Because Bernie Mac was one thing that we have never heard, a brilliant and extraordinarily well-informed sports authority who cursed like a sailor. I've seen his brilliance twice, once in that form with Bryant Gumbel on his HBO show Real Sports and the other time in Spike Lee's film 'Get on the Bus'.

Get on the Bus was Bernie Mac's debut to a big audience, and he still had that raw edge of a black man not sufficiently appreciated. Ask me and I'll say the phrase 'grown ass man' started then and there with Bernie Mac. Bernie Mac was conservative. People tend to act as if they don't understand what black conservatives are like - as we remember Bernie Mac, keep that in mind.

--

Issac Hayes was a lyrical man in a big black man suit. Somehow he always seemed heavier to me than he actually was. He never managed to convert his intimidating largeness in the way James Brown (the sportscaster) or Geoffrey Holder did. So I am particularly aware of how he generated an elaborate sort of music on the edge of orchestral. His voice was uniquely earthy and passionate in a way so many of us wanted to be known in the 70s - Soulful with a capital S. But unlike a load of other singers, Hayes didn't spend a lot of time saying 'Huh!' like the chorus of Kool and the Gang's Jungle Boogie, so popular in those days.

All of these thoughts on Hayes are new for me and gotten in the past year. Some NPR show hipped me to him and I listened seriously for a short time. That's what I got. I'm sure we've lost all that and more.

As a side note, when I was in Cleveland a few short weeks ago, I had lunch in the Galleria and the jazzy joint there. One of the waitresses flirted with me saying that I reminded her of Issac Hayes, it was one of the few times in life I was too taken aback not to have a sweet rejoinder. I could only blush and smile. I think Issac would have wanted it that way.

August 06, 2008

I took 30 seconds out of my busy day to watch the McCain ad that calls Obama a celebrity. So? Isn't he the biggest celebrity in the world? Of course he is. I think it was a well done ad. What's funny is that I didn't know ahead of time that he was comparing Obama to Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, I'd have to ask what's with the chicks? Obviously, it's not my demographic.

July 08, 2008

The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program - a huge
stockpile of concentrated natural uranium - reached a Canadian port
Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week
airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.

The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" - the seed material for
higher-grade nuclear enrichment - was a significant step toward closing
the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S.
and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents
or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.

What's now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the
remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex
about 12 miles south of Baghdad - using teams that include Iraqi
experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.

This is the stuff that Plame's husband, Wilson said there was none of. Or to be more precise he said there was no more of it being bought. Which may or may not be true and this stockpile doesn't prove him wrong. Wilson's problem was that he said so without having any proof and then blamed the Bush administration for trying to destroy him. Etc.

Is 500 tons of yellowcake a weapon of mass destruction? No. Is it material for a dirty bomb. Nope. It's an industrial sized ingredient for a big nuclear program. How many nukes could you make with 500 tons? Over 100. So is having 500 tons of yellowcake evidence of a nuclear program? Yes. Is it evidence of an active nuclear program? That's a question for inspectors.

What's perfectly clear here is that until the completion of this transaction, Iraq hadn't been disarmed. The world is now safer.

I actually haven't read an official obituary, but I can gather that the man has died from the number of comments in the RSS feeder. I'm going to say something that you probably won't hear anyone else say which is that American racists need democratic representation too. So when it came to Helms and Thurmond, I basically saw them as the official representatives of American white supremacists.

You will note that there is nobody immediately coming to follow in their segregationist footsteps, but at least he lived long enough to see Obama get the Democratic nomination as official as that may be.

As a Republican, people who know no Republicans tend to think that I must be trying to follow his lead. The closest they come to being correct is the fact that I once considered living in NC. Other than that, I only think of the man when forced to by such accusations. At any rate I'm sure somebody somewhere benefited from the works of his life which is ever tainted by his racist ideas. Too bad.

April 26, 2008

What is the difference between community expectations of black men who happen to be at strip clubs at 4 in the morning? Should they expect them to be cops or johns? That's a tough question in today's political environment. I say we are suffering some deteriorating standards when something like this case raises outrage. I really don't have a lot to say except to raise some points that don't seem to be raised. In particular, what duty does the community have?

From that perspective, and as you might suspect, my sympathies are with the police who were involved in the undercover operation investigating the criminal element that ran the strip club in question. And I am dismayed at the appearance of community members (but who knows where all the protesters came from?) who didn't seem to care whether or not cops put their lives on the line.

Obviously there is no reasonable way to say that Bell deserved to die, because of what we have learned about him in all after the fact. But one does have to weigh the privileges of partying with the responsibilities of law enforcement. Bell's life is not a reasonable price to pay, but I believe everybody walked into this situation with their eyes open.

One more thing. I haven't weighed in on race vis a vis law and order since the Philadelphia black militia. I haven't heard anything updating that situation. But I wonder, in the zeal that many folks had to have black men do some self-policing, what their attitude might be in this particular situation vis a vis policing. Would the strip club be considered off-limits?

April 25, 2008

McCain, apparently, and not that I've been listening or am much concerned at the moment, dissed some Republicans in North Carolina for airing a 'racist' ad. I haven't looked any closer because I expect the story has no legs, except for the following reported at Patterico:

It’s fair to call someone who votes against Obama solely because of his race
a racist but there are other reasons than racism someone might vote for
McCain. There are people like me who will vote for McCain because I
don’t like Obama’s liberal policies, his lack of experience, and his
questionable character. That doesn’t make me a racist, except perhaps
in David Plouffe-world.

The irony is that this was a throw-away line in the interview.
Plouffe was conceding that Obama has lost some voters to McCain, and
it’s telling that Plouffe thinks votes have been lost because voters
are racists. Clearly Plouffe believes that a segment of McCain’s
support comes from one-dimensional racist voters.

That’s a sad and one-dimensional view of the electorate Obama craves
to serve. As President, I don’t think Obama the uniter will be
motivated to connect with racist McCain supporters … unless they happen
to remind him of a racist old uncle.

Limbaugh was mouthing off against McCain on the matter this morning. I turned him off. McCain, I think, is guilty of either pandering or being more stupid than I thought. I tend to believe the former, and I'm not particularly saying much - I think that level of pandering (wrt McCain) on both 'racism' and 'global warming' is basically required to get the attention of a certain fragment of the American electorate.

What's a bit more interesting is that I don't see the pieces as aggregated. That is to say there are very few single issue racial or climatic voters. Rather, all of us have some fraction of our decision weighted on race or climate and a certain amount of pandering gets a certain amount of our support.

The fact that McCain will not get attributed any significant gain among 'the black vote' is demonstrable proof that 'the black vote' is racially motivated. It doesn't mean much only because there's not much meaning anyone can take from this kind of babble. Still it is a consistent indication that we're not really talking about people who aggregate into block bodies, rather that the lot of us angle towards or away from candidates according to these block-like ideas.

As usual, I give McCain the benefit of the doubt, and as usual I am sick to death of all the blather surrounding Jeremiah Wright. As for the Weather Underground? I'll deal with that separately.

April 14, 2008

Right Radio is all over Obama's pledge to be the candidate of the bitter. I think the circle of contempt is clear. All we need is for Barry to find some people who are as mad as hell and not going to take it anymore and we'll be right back with McCain as Nixon supporting the silent majority.

Obama's characterization of the denizens of 'Pennsyltucky' is perfectly consistent with those in Trinity's congregation and uplift programs. He wants the disaffected vote, and being the Leftiest candidate, he should be certain to get it. What the Right cannot stand is that this is Obama's America. Limbaugh this morning chimed in saying that Middle America *is* bitter, but bitter about the things that have been denied them because of the Left.

How many clowns can pile out of the bittermobile? We'll give it a week.

April 07, 2008

The news is abuzz with the prospect that Condi Rice may be seeking the office of Vice President. What is particularly interesting to me in this regard is the extent to which it suggests that her differences with the Bush Administration in foreign policy might be at issue and the implications that accrue to the differences between McCain's geopolitical worldview and Bush's.

Of course this is not the primary reason for the buzz. Rather, or so it appears, the reason is for the identity monkey wrench it throws to the Democrats. However it is not so shortsighted as the particularly shallow counter-candidacy of Alan Keyes against Illinois Senator Obama when that little fiasco was attempted. Rice is a genuine superstar and darling of the GOP and very popular.

I think Rice makes for an attractive candidate and have no doubts she's up to it. Lots of people like her for lots of reasons, and her geopolitical gravitas is hardly dismissible. At any rate, her positions would certainly get the focus they deserve. Whether or not such is a good thing for McCain remains to be seen. I think it augers well for the independent vote as well as the dissident Democrat vote.

As much as I got excited about a Petraeus vice-presidency, I cannot see that working with McCain. Besides, I'd rather see Petraeus as SecDef.

April 02, 2008

Over the short weekend, the Spousal Unit and I found a flophouse no-tell motel in the San Gabriel Valley to pass a sleepy afternoon. There, with mirrors on the ceiling and pink champagne on ice, we watched the bittersweet tale of Joe Louis on the local PBS affiliate TV broadcast.

As the SU sighed at gentle Joe's misfortune I parsed the narrative with exruciating exactitude, enjoying, analyzing, second-guessing and running a counter-narrative all at once. I cannot seem to let go with documentaries the way I do with action flicks. It's the same way I shout back at my children's teachers when I criticize the subjects they allow. But then again, if you're going to teach Global Warming, it might as well be to middle school kids.

About Joe, there was this disbelief that he could be humbled and obliged to America that ran through the entire program. It was as if the entire class of memories were being shape-shifted into the privileged impatience of Black Power for the sake of the generation that didn't know Joe. And at the same time you think, my God how easy it could be for any one of America's wealthy blacks to erase the Brown Bomber's enormous debt to the IRS.

At once I marvelled that the symbolism of the man could be so great and yet the actual man so manifestly abused. Was American patriotism ever purchased so cheaply? At the same time, I never sensed for a moment that Louis himself ever questioned that he should be patriotic. In the end, you have to love your country and your countrymen, or leave them.

March 13, 2008

Brian Ross’s report for Good Morning America on Barack
Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, is potentially a huge problem for
Obama. In the piece, Ross has clips of Wright delivering sermons in
which he says we should not say God Bless America, but God “Damn”
America, in which he calls America the US of KKKA (referring to how
racist the country is), and in which he says about September 11 that
America’s “chickens have come home to roost.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, Mark Halperin has a Youtube of Wright
in which he says Jesus was a black man killed by rich white folks and
he drops the N-Word in reference to Hillary.

Jeez. This is Obama’s “spiritual advisor”?

I knew Wright had said supportive things about Louis Farrakhan, and that’s bad enough. But I had no idea it was this bad.

Unless our news media is totally in the bag for Obama, I think Bevan
is right. He’s going to face increased scrutiny on this, and it could
be a real problem for him.

He's right. And what he is going to discover, if Barry is the kind of brother I think he ought to be, is exactly how deep the rabbithole goes with regard to the amount of lipservice blackfolks give in defense of our weaker bretheren.

To wax theoretical for a moment:

I was listening to a talkshow the other night and the host couldn't figure out if Obama ever wrote about being damaged by the n-word. If Barry were to concede that it's so hard for a black man like himself today, he's going to get dissed far and wide. He won't. So it's difficult for some whitefolk to understand how or why superstars like Barry should give 'victimology' any play whatsoever. So here is what whitefolks need to hear (and I'll make a video too) which they always get when it is explained to them this way in person.

OK. This is for you white dude. I want you to go back you highschool memories and think of your first crush. You can see her face, her blonde hair, her blue eyes, the way she walked, her voice and how a mere glance from her turned your insides to jelly. She never touched you, she never even spoke to you, but you spent so much time thinking about her. You loved her and hated her at the same time. There are still songs that take you back to the moment. One day she actually spoke to you and told you that you were lower than toad poop. You never forgave her, and you never will.

For some blackfolks, this is what the first racist experience is like. For you, maybe it was the first time you saw your father hit your mother. The first time a bully smacked you in the face and gave you a bloody nose. The first time you flunked a class. The first time you wrecked your parents' car. You had nightmares.

Now grow up and get over it. Easy right? For some people yes. For others there are decades of reading self-help books and going to therapy and strange obsessions. For some blackfolks, racism is like that. On the surface, the stupid act of a stupid person and in the context of world history, less than a drop in the bucket - like your job, your marriage and your kids. A mere nothing. Disposable minutia in the great scheme of things, like a night with a hooker.

So. Will Obama ever admit that it hurts to be a black man in America? No. But will he play to the politics that caters to the victims of America? Of course. He's a 'new' politician. So Jeremiah Wright is the baggage - he's the man responsible for saying 'bad things happen to good black people, and it's not your fault'. And this is the kind of fellow traveller Democrats need because they are holistic, and Obama is holistic. Like Bill (and unlike Hillary) Barry feels your pain, especially if it's black pain of the sort mentioned above. It's real.

I don't think that area is proper to bring into politics which is why crusty, impersonal characters like Cheney don't phase me. I don't need the guy to pretend like he likes me and can relate to me on a personal level. Which is another reason Obama doesn't sway me outside of his policy positions. (see here).

February 26, 2008

I heard a story on Monday afternoon about some picture of Barry that had been photoshopped (or not) showing him in some somehow insulting getup. Having seen the picture finally today, I don't see what the big deal is. Then I found another version which must be the photoshopped version which shows... well you can see for yourself the difference.The version I got was too small for me to even tell if it was Obama. But there's certainly a difference between the two.

What's cleverly insidious about the shopped picture is that it's too small for me to detect photoshopping. Generally these things are easy to spot. This one is not.

At any rate there's some controversy about who is circulating this picture, but again I don't find it particularly offensive. It's a simple lie. Considering the dozens of monkey pictures I've seen of GWBush over the past few years, I'm waiting for that level of caricature to surface. This is, after all, the same country that made P.T. Barnum & Flavor Flav rich. There are few levels of uncivil ridicule to which Americans will not stoop. This is just low rent stupid stuff. Let it go people.

February 17, 2008

Aha. So I saw the YouTube of the officer that went dead off on a skateboard kid. It's hilarious that right at the end of the video he asks if the camera is on. It sounds like he's about to say "If I find myself on YouTube.." and considering the abuse he heaps on the kid, some further abuse is forthcoming. I've been hearing about this deal in the sphere, but never paid it any mind all last week.

The first thing I thought when I watched the video was that this cop was a rookie. Because one of the first things cops learn as a rookie is that you are not allowed to take any shit from anyone. Never. Not one inch. You are the law and people are not at liberty to disrespect the law. So as he came out of his 'dont disrespect me, this badge or the department' thing I said - ahh rookie.

The video is kind of shocking, but the more I listen to it, the more I side with the cop. The kid loses his skateboard and gets a verbal beatdown and has to deal with his mother being called by the cop. It's rather obvious that the kid could have been cited for boarding there - can't tell if he was arrested or not. You definitely need the PR from the department's standpoint that the officer gets suspended. But what really went down? A kid learning in no uncertain terms that the chubby man in yellow driving an electric scooter is not to be trifled with. Yes, precisely because he is an officer of the law.

It turns out that Officer Rivieri is a veteran on the force, which implies to me that when he said that the kid needs to learn about respect if he expects to live long in this world, that Rivieri has probably seen some ugly shit. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he had to deal with some grave situation recently. Anyway.

The real commentary on our society can be found in the comments. Support your local police.

February 04, 2008

I hated this Super Bowl, and I suppose that proves that my plan is working. My plan is to become more invested in sports and less in politics in the coming year. But there are unintended consequences. Pain. Rather like Commander Data wanting to experience ordinary human emotion I find myself a bit overwhelmed by taking this crap seriously. What's worse is that I still haven't developed the proper vocabulary for excoriating players. It remains in my limbic brain from childhood. All I can do is curse and sputter. See the spit flying? Fricking losers.

I had to leave all of the Super Bowl parties early. I couldn't take it.

There were about six commercials out of sixty that were worth beans and not one that was just great. The eTrade talking baby. The fire breather. The giant pigeons were memorable but that wasn't even a funny commercial.

Ask your doctor if Plaxico is right for you. Side effects may include bad calls on fumbles, loss of Super Bowl rings...

January 14, 2008

Is Dr, King a major deity or merely a stellar figure? If this is a matter of some controversy to you, then I suppose you might be one of the members of the community of folks whose hands are trembling over the latest Obama-Clinton cat fight.

This unbearably shallow debate is the kind of racial shadowboxing that Democrats specialize in. Clearly, Clinton has offended some Civil Rights fashionistas by wearing her King Legacy Pin slightly askew. Obama has made it clear that he recognizes the opportunity for what it is, a chance to say he's more right by not having made any such fashion faux pas.

There's really not much else to it but that, although I imagine many commentators will ride the tangents into the depths of space. There's only one way this can get better, which is if the candidates 'go there'. But of course they won't - they can't. There is no real debate on race because there is no real controversy on race. There is no real racial policy in America, there are only people with good manners and common sense and there are people with bigotry in their hearts and minds. The latter group makes life tedious and outre for the majority of us, and occasionally unbearable for a few of us, but nobody should expect any candidate to do more than hire or fire a few attorneys at the EEOC, and then life goes on. You can bet neither of them will even say anything that specific. Instead we are all to imply that somebody is 'playing a race card' which essentially means nothing.

Now I know that as a black man, I am presumed to be extraordinarily sensitive to any racial impropriety. That's because I am heir to generations of victims and am thus some sort of victim myself. So goes the common wisdom. In America, I have the exclusive privilege to generate some extra measure of sympathy because of this. However, I personally choose not to exercise this privilege although I reserve the right to do anything that I deem appropriate to my character and reputation. For those black men who rise in social prominence in America, we are aware of the tradeoff. All Americans are invested in one way or another to whether or not such a privilege is invoked. Some want to see a certain amount of obeisance to the tradition of complaint as the politics of civil disobedience are invoked. Others want to see a certain amount of disregard to that tradition as demonstrative of a more powerful sort of agency. I make the distinction between the politics of civil rights and those of social power. Nobody should ever give up civil rights, but the agency of establishing and maintaining social power requires different tactics than those most familiar to Americans when they think of black politics, ie sit-ins, marches, and stentorian race baiting rhetoric.

Barack Obama cannot be unaware of this. If anyone wants a clue to understand how he is likely to react, then let this be a clue. He will assert his personal character and reputation according to assumed social power. In other words, he will do exactly what he did in Iowa - he will act presidential. He will not, under any circumstances be pulled in the direction which would intimate any extraordinary sensitivity or victim status. He will be a wall, and anyone thinking they can prick him into flinching will find their strategies backfiring. But such pricking, should it continue, will be met by a clench-jawed fury. Think Denzel Washington in 'Man on Fire'.

This is what I know about my generation of black men of substance. It applies to Obama in a particularly unique way because he does inherit another privilege of the common American wisdom. That is, as a black man with power in the Democrat Party, he has no explaining to do. As a Senator for Illinois, it is likely that he got more black votes to get him in office than did Michael Steele in Maryland as Lt. Governor, but not many more. Nevertheless it is presumed that simply because he is a Democrat he is the de facto leader of the black electorate. Given the chance, blacks would anoint him The One. In some ways, he walks in the shoes of Ron Brown, except that Obama is that much further along the curve, a cabinet post could be considered beneath him in America's mind. Any black Republican in an equivalent elected position would would have more explaining to do, although by the very same token of social power, they generally have not.

Aside from all that, an Obama Clinton catfight is entertaining for this Republican, and I'm hoping it becomes more vicious as time goes on. So here's to hoping they stop clawing and pull out more dangerous weapons that cut deeper into fleshy issues. There will be blood, I hope Obama doesn't get too much on his suits.

January 10, 2008

Some pundit somewhere has to take credit for inventing a term I never heard of before, and my parents worked for Bradley. It has to do with the skewing of exit poll data due to an overabundance of white guilt. Lord knows that Shelby Steele is going to use this one.

So we're in deep prognostication horse race territory and nobody gets paid to say "I have no idea why", so the crazy theories are hip deep. Explaining why the exit polls showed Obama leading in New Hampshire and actual ballot count saying he loses is the order of the day. Thus the Bradley Effect theory. When they get on TV or in front of a reporter, they want to look enlightened. Yes my neck may be red but I voted for the colored fellow. They say. But in fact, they voted for the white one.

I'm taking all of these screwy theories with a grain of salt. I just wanted you all to know that. I expect somebody is going to write a PhD thesis in American studies on the 57 varieties of racism suffered by poor Barack before this year is over. I just wish everybody would stop being so surprised that he wins and surprised that he loses. There is no predicting. There are just results and armchair punditry.

January 04, 2008

I heard Obama's victory speech on the radio and boy was he pumped. He sounded like the man who just won the Boston Marathon ready to predict winning the LA Marathon - telling the streets in the next town to submit. But that's the kind of confidence winning in Iowa give presidential candidates, and Obama is ready. He sounds like a very good winner. Of course I don't take the symbolism of his victory quite as seriously as the chanting crowds, nor should he.

As for Huckabee, one commentator got it right. Every vote for Huckabee is a final vote for Giuliani. Huckabee, best described as a 'pro-life Jimmy Carter', has proven that the hardline conservative vote is not invincible. Nobody but nobody in the GOP expects Huckabee to do much of anything after this. In fact, they are defying him. I'm riding that wave of defiance.

December 27, 2007

I fear the day when Pakistan becomes more of a liability than an asset in the GWOT. We already know that the SIS, their CIA, is very dicey and has manipulated a lot of intel on Bin Laden and others. I am coming to think that their turnover of AQ Khan was basically all the quid they were willing and able to pro quo the US.

Just last week when Musharraf announced that he would end the state of emergency, I was beginning to think optimistically. His allowing of Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif back into the political process was a crucial step in linking his Presidency to a future democracy. Plus he took off the uniform. Sure there was and is still a huge issue with the Supreme Court mess, but I think he was making progress. Now with the assassination of Bhutto, Musharraf and Pakistan have taken a body blow.

Somebody needs to be the figurehead for a huge crackdown on terror, and I think it has to be Musharraf's biggest ally in the SIS. The question is whether or not that institution can be trusted to do anything in the interest of a secular democracy. They may hold the key.

We know that Pakistanis have great trust in the Army, but the Army was not called out in response to the protests and gnashing of teeth over the death of Bhutto. That's a good move. But the Army and the SIS together are not going to save Pakistan. Could it be Sharif? Could it be one of the figures still under house arrest in the state of emergency?

December 15, 2007

Steroid use in baseball is de facto legitimate, but everybody is embarrassed about it. Now the charade is over.

It shouldn't take grand jury investigations or a whole bunch of time or money to find out who is using what in order to play baseball any better. All we have to do is drop the phony 'enforcement' regime and bring the whole practice into the open, which is to say legalize it. The game everybody has been watching and enjoying, they have been doing so under false premises. Instead of just Barry Bonds, it was him and a sizable fraction of the entire league, including coaches, doctors, owners, and other associated weed carriers. If you thought baseball was 'pure', now you must live with knowing you've been in love with a fake.

Everybody should admit that it doesn't get any worse than this. All of major league baseball is an asterisk. Not literally all, but symbolically all. There is no longer a situation in which performance enhancing drug uses can be asterisked into compartmentalized areas. The stink permeates the entire sport and there is no more walling it off. You can now add baseball as the fourth horse. It is now sex, drugs, rock & roll and baseball. Mom and apple pie stand alone.

From this moment forward, the only hypocrisy left is a crackdown. I've have said it before. Professional baseball needs performance enhancement because of the very nature of the competition. Chess, for example, does not. In golf, it's the technology of the tools that undergo the change. Basketball, is the 'purest' major sport left. As for the nobility of sport itself and messages to kids:

There seems to me nothing inherent in the values we seek to revere
in sport which limit them to football or baseball. If there is a such
thing as athletic nobility, surely it can't be limited to a handful of
contests. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, the human
drama of athletic competition, certainly all of these are found in
sports other than those we dote upon. So it seems to me that some of
our ethical dilemma in picking the wrong sports heroes because we are
picking the wrong sports. Think about it this way, there was once a
time when boxing was considered the domain of athletic nobility. That
is no longer the case. Although some would argue that we have lost
something permanently as a showcase for heroism, I say it has just
moved on to another sport. We are not at a loss for heroes, they just
work another arena. Or maybe our society doesn't value courage,
strength and speed as much as we thought.

But let's say we allowed drugs in our pro sports. Whatever the
values our society places on its mastery I think it is absurd to assume
that the critical elements of every sport would become threatened by
generally allowing dope. I could be wrong, but I don't believe that we
know so much about long distance running as we know about
weightlifting. Every highschool kid knows that steroids will grow the
kind of muscle mass that makes for a better weightlifter, but what kind
of drug makes one a better ski jumper, a better hockey goalie, a better
golfer a better video gamer?

So I think that people should admit that it's not the drugs, but the
cheating that makes the difference in athletic nobility. If we allowed
it, the drug regimen would become just another part of the diet and
training discipline athletes use. For those who believe that a drug
free purity is necessary, create another class of competition. I happen
to think that the Olympic Games best suits the class of competition
which should be drug free. After all, many of these are the sports
which have little else going for them but the prestige of athletic
nobility.

December 12, 2007

What part of 'compartmentalization of sources and methods' do you not understand?

As I think about the destruction of tapes of CIA interrogations, the thing that strikes me is that this seems to be the kind of thing you absolutely don't want to fall into enemy hands. So I think it stands to reason that there are very few 'need to know' folks outside of those whose job it is to make sense of the intelligence provided by any recordings of interrogations.

As a CIA officer, I could not imagine that I'd have much confidence that in today's political climate, that congressional oversight in matters regarding interrogration is much more than a witch hunt. It's all anybody seems to care about. We've weasel-worded waterboarding into the torture category and all of the -gate hunters are trying to find evidence of who boarded whom and when with no regard to the aims or the standard hiding practices of sources and methods expected of the CIA.

I predict that it won't be long until the Democrat candidates promise to use the full force of their office to expose and punish any and everybody in the Agency who ever used or approved the use of some overbroad interpretation of the word 'torture'. It will be called cleaning house. It will in fact be a purge. It will come at the expense of the faith of CIA career people that their own sources and methods will not be exploited for poltical gain.

December 03, 2007

In a country of 300 million, somebody is bound to get shot. This week the media's attention has focused on three black men who were among the many.

In the first case, two men were burglars who got busted by a belligerent and nosy neighbor. This guy named Joe Horn in Texas essentially called 911 and informed them that a burglary was happening next door. He then proceded to get his shotgun, leave his house and chase down the burglars with deadly force despite being warned not to.

The call started off calmly enough.

"(There are) burglars breaking into a house next door," the caller is heard on the 911 tape telling a police dispatcher.Pasadena resident reportedly shoots suspected thieves.

"I've got a shotgun do you want me to stop 'em?" The dispatcher was quick to respond.

"Nope don't do that. Ain't no property worth shooting somebody over OK?," the Pasadena dispatcher said as he called out officers to the scene.

What Joe Horn did was entirely predictable. In his heightened state of panic, he shot the two men dead without any regard to the appropriate rules of engagement. This is exactly the kind of result I predicted would happen in the case of the Philadelphia Black Militia. Fortunately, it hasn't happened in Philly, yet. It's always a bad idea to send civilians to do a cop's job whether you are in Texas, Philadelphia or Iraq. Every civilized country has police. We know how to do this. Joe Horn was a fool for taking the law into his own hands and he's going
to live with regret for killing those men for the rest of his life. He's a somewhat sympathetic fool, but a dangerous fool nonetheless.

Police tend to be on the scene for the aftermath. It's easy to say 'too little too late' when it comes to second guessing the cops. It's easy to connect the dots and say something ugly going on should have been prevented. That was the case for the star football player who was shot and killed last week. It seems everyone everywhere is mourning his death and thinking, that could have been me. I bet they're also thinking, why there wasn't somebody there with a shotgun at the ready. I know I did. But Joe Horn reminds us of the ever-present downside.

There is a narrow window of time between the beginning of a potentially deadly crime and the time that cops can arrive on scene. Call it the Red Zone. Civilians get caught in the Red Zone all the time. What can we do? What should we do? There's no telling or predicting when or where you might be stuck in this zone. It happened to me. I know my instincts are to defend my neighbors and myself. But I've thought long and hard about whether it's my job to use deadly force. It's not an easy question, because the responsibility is, by definition, the biggest responsibility anyone can face - life or death. In my maturity, I've come to accept more of that responsibility. I wrote:

I have come to accept something about my civil duty and
responsibility to the public to my fellow countrymen. In dropping the
persona of my bohemian self, in becoming a husband and father, in
becoming a middle aged man, I had to acknowledge my own power to be an
example, more than I ever thought I'd have to be. Way deep down inside
I knew the truth of the phrase 'civilization is where you put it', but
I always thought when it came down to it, it would fall to the
professionals and experts. I should have known better. It takes all of
us, not just rhetorically, but really.

I couldn't say I wanted to be a police officer. I wanted to be a 'bhuddist cop'. I didn't want to disturb my inner peace through the action of bringing peace into the world. I was a bumpersticker pacifist. And because of that I inverted that latent desire in people I didn't respect from courage to cowardice.

Yes I want to own a gun, not to be any old pistol-packing vigilante.
But I start to wonder about the men who do, just as I wonder about the
men who drive Porsches in my neighborhood, and the men whose sons I
admire in the local Scout troop. What is my relationship to my
neighbor, and how have I let them down by not knowing them better? What
are the slim tendrils of curiosity that I can work into bonds of mutual
interdependence? Today I know something I didn't know in 2000 or in
1992.

I'm responsible for war and peace in my community, and I have no right to cry over a loss that I never invested in.

So I'm saying that I understand, I think, what the better part of Joe Horn was thinking. I understand what many people are saying when they call for us to take more responsibility for the safety of our communities. Our sense of violation is physical and visceral. We want to act, and stop that bad thing from happening. It's such a basic human attribute that it's universal. But we tend to forget that this is the same feeling that cops and soldiers have, and why they do what they do every day. We tend to forget that because we get involved in political micromanagement. We look at bureaucracies and start up with the statistical morality game. How many men could have been saved if only...[insert politically motivated, yet heartfelt institutional reform here].

There is a subtle kind of victimology going on here. We complain that the System ain't good enough - that it doesn't protect us from murdering crooks, gun-happy vigilantes, corrupt cops, stupid judges or overzealous prosecutors. It's very hard to get that System to give us true satisfaction, because that only comes from revenge. What we have is a Justice System, not a Revenge System. Lucky for us.

So all we can do is take out verbal revenge and try to get our satisfaction. Here is as good a place as any.

November 27, 2007

A lot of inside political baseball socks have been knocked off by the announcement of two bombshells this week. I yawn and speculate.

Trent Lott ResignsTo spend more time with his family? How about to spend more money with his family. Dude has the opportunity to walk into some serious walking around money. And why shouldn't he? I don't think anyone has suggested he was particularly bribable as Senators go, so let him go for the dough. He obviously didn't have it coming in, and he's made a big splash in his career. I never liked Trent Lott although I forget exactly why I didn't in the days before the Strom Thurmond remark. Nor am I particularly interested in looking up why not in my own blog. Senators come and senators go. He's gone. It looks like John Kyl is in. That is to say, he is in line to become the new Senate Minority Whip. I actually do like Kyl. He's clear and forthright as politicians go. Not much doublespeak with Kyl. On the whole, I think it's a good thing.

Oprah Backs ObamaYou could see this one coming a mile away. In fact, I thought it was already official. Apparently not. Fresh from handling her South African business recently, Oprah's got a new pet. That's nice. It's probably not much of a double-edged sword for Obama. I can't imagine that anyone who was for him will back away because of this, and those of us who think he can be pretty loopy on foreign policy aren't going to change our stripes because of the great Ms. Winfrey's sterling endorsement. I can imagine that his publisher is going to be pretty happy and he'll certainly get another book out if he doesn't suck up to become Veep in the next four years (given Clinton).

oh yeah and one more bombshell, but it was in the prior week.

Petraeus as Vice PresidentPetraeus could even make Sam Brownback electable. No matter what kind of conservative you are, you like Petraeus because he was the first leader in the entire Iraq War that made sense at the beginning and still makes sense today. But of course the killer combination would be Giuliani and Petraeus. How likely? Not bloody likely. David has got a job to do and he's still doing it. Our future security problems are not even reflections of our current ones, so it would be purely symbolic. DP ought to go to the Joint Chiefs or Sec Def. He sure as hell would make a better impression on the military than Rumsfeld, desptie Rummy's bold leadership. There's got to be another magic bullet for the ticket somewhere.

October 25, 2007

"if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you
ought to be interested in preventing them (the Iranians) from have the
knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."-- GW Bush

Sounds reasonable to me. It is in everybody's interest to keep Iran from going loony. The trick seems to be how might this be done when they are funding Hezbolla.

But let's just say for the sake of argument, that there isn't jack we can do to stop Iran from building the Islamic Bomb. What's next? Obviously, any president who isn't having his military planners consider that possibility isn't worth a dime. Obama, are you listening?

Anyone who read Colin Powell's bio knows that the general spent many months with many thousands of troops and tactical nukes at the ready watching the Fulda Gap ever on alert for WW3. He was there. That's no joke. That's the way America operates, and that is not going to change. It should change. We should pre-empt those with hostile intentions. It's pay now or pay later and the PNACians understand this.

We have been fortunate to have a President who puts troops in harms way and develop our own capability in the field of operations. Petraeus is somebody who could not have happened in the Carter, Reagan, Bush or Clinton eras. In those days, the American President was too accustomed to overusing, and often abusing the Directorate of Operations of the CIA and paying proxy soldiers and Contras to do the geopolitical heavy lifting that should have been our burden in the first place. The more I study this sad history of the Cold War, the more I lament the idea that we could place 'advisors' all over the globe and do covert war using local 'freedom fighters'. I'm glad we have a real Army and yes Blackwater doing all of this hard military work above board in broad daylight. That's how American wars should be.

But the plans for such wars should always remains ongoing and in secret. That's what the Pentagon gets paid to do - plan for and respond to threats.

In the current American political environment, it is difficult for me to see how we might ever attain the kind of rapport with the Iranian people that we deserve. We Americans are quite lousy at diplomacy. I don't mean our diplomats and bureaucrats at State, I mean our citizens. We don't establish real ties to foreign countries in very significant ways. Even now through the Iraqi conflict, we have not by and large come to any advanced accommodation with the Iraqi people. We have done admirably well as of late being the proper soldiers in pacification, but we Americans can hardly brag about being goodwill ambassadors to the Middle East. It is not because of our foreign policy, it is because of our worldview. We can be so very condescending. Even through that, I have been constantly buoyed by the actual words of Secretary Rice and Ambassador Crocker whenever I hear them. It's not enough, but it's something.

I don't know how to get America on track, to focus on national consensus so that we may give our better natures more air. The same spirit that brings us to compassion over the conflict in Darfur is the primary American spirit. When it comes down to it, we do help and we do everything in a big way. We will come back to being a nation of consensus.

When we do become a nation of consensus once again, it will be useful to point out, and believe me I will, those marginal loudmouths who will turn the bile they reserve for the Bush Administration towards America in general. For when the White House and the Congress will bi-partisanly agree to defend American interests abroad, you can be sure that the George Carlins of the world will cynically describe us as 'a warlike people' while fighting to preserve their grip on the right to spew the obscenity of the day. It will be the tenor of language they will have to use in order to shock us out of the 'complacency' of rational national interest.

Those of us who to strive to be rational everyday are quite well aware that Iranians fall in love and have babies too. It only means they are people. We hear critics suggest that war plans dehumanize the enemy - and it is only a sort of xenophobic racism, or religious intolerance that allows us to consider drawing up plans to fight wars. What they cannot seem to imagine is the kind of rationale I've had as a moral geopolitical neocon since day one:

Yet if I could stop for a minute and start dealing with the hideous
facts of the matter on the ground in Iraq (and probably a half dozen
other horrible places), I wonder if I would mind so much if my
president is Shrek instead of a Handsome Prince. I'm a policy snob in
the face of Saddam's clear and present danger. Not to me, to Iraqis.
It's not about me.

Since it is not about me, and a busybody neighbor is better than an
abusive parent, I have to concede the fact that an ugly rescue is
better than benign neglect. I feel that our geopolitical snobbery and
posing are pretty worthless right about now, and the fact that we have
to wheedle our way around the diplomatic chicanery of the UN and
everyplace else is only necessitated by a failure of brotherhood and an
ignoble squeamishness which is not rescued by our well-meant outrage at
Bush's mendacity. I do believe in class warfare.That means noblesse on
our part and revolt by the Shi'a.

The focus of the world is on Saddam Hussein. WMD or no, Iraqis are
hopeless without our intervention. Now is the time for action,
political snobs be damned. No matter how physically wreckless we may
be, and I have a strong feeling that we won't be, this war is better
happening than not. No matter how diplomatically wreckless we have
been, and I know for damned sure that we have been, those are only
words and hard feelings, but they're not lives. Lives are more
important than words.

Americans who rationally observe the actions of Ahmadinejad's Quds forces, his engagements in Iraq and Lebanon through them and Hezbollah must see how he seeks to undermine the rule of law and of national sovereignty. Americans who hear his willingness to question the statehood of Israel should rationally question his willingness to respect borders.

October 13, 2007

On HadithaApparently, there's nothing left to speak about. I never thought there was much and was rather incensed, although not to the point of Michael Savage, that our soldiers were chained up at Pendleton. It was the Massacre That Wasn't. Michele Malkin ought to have the last word. Eat your heart out, haters.

On Al GoreThere's only one place left for Gore to go, second place again. Here's the the best slogan I can hand to my fellow, if misguided, Americans. Clinton-Gore, better than before, following up on 2004. As for the Nobel Peace Prize itself, right now I think it's value is slightly higher than an NAACP Image Award. Whenever awards from committees are awarded to committees, all sense of human heroism is lost.On Christopher Hitchens' LetterLet me be the first on the Right to slap Hitchens and the Right around for getting all sobby and sentimental over the inspired and inspiring soldier. If I hear another verbal creche of support for the troops, I think I'm going to retch. It's actually starting to sound like Barbara Ehrenreich when she talks about the fate of the great American waitress. Friken' violin creshendos of sentiment are really getting on my nerves.

On Ann Coulter's "Anti-Semitism"For everybody who even gave her remark about 'perfected Jews' even half a gasp of a raised eyebrow, I offer you the back of my hand.

On Clarence Thomas' AngerWell now we have an angry black man who feels he's been disrespected by whitefolks in the System. Do you get him now? You shouldn't. He's complicated. Whoda thunk? The only way to make sense of Clarence Thomas is to stop abstracting him and pay attention to what he says and does. Maybe 15 years from now, people will actually do so.

September 25, 2007

The head of Columbia U. thought that he could score points with devastating rhetoric. And so he invited Crazy A. into his salon in order to make a fool out of him. He obviously was impressed by the clever remarks made by one member of the Council on Foreign Relations last year, and decided to go one better as many of us wanted to see.

But I think in the end, the snubbing would have been a better idea. Not because we are afraid of him, but simply because when it comes down to it, he's a nutcase and we all know it. And so we should treat him as just the kind of sociopath he is. If you don't have an idea how that ought to work, consider how most Americans treat OJ.

All the talk about the value of free speech means something if all you have in your arsenal are words. The leader of Iran does not need Columbia University, he can only abuse it. Beating him in a war of words is pointless when it is known that he uses guerrillas and terrorists.

Bollinger has an inflated sense of self-importance that I think is going to be over emphasized by those making points for free speech and the American way. So I don't think there's much bragging that should go on, because the hypocrisy of Bollinger's campus rules are clear. Columbia has banned ROTC from campus in its attempt to create a no-tolerance zone for insults to homosexuals. And yet they allow the man who has them executed to speak. Bollinger can practically be called disingenuous. Did he really believe that Crazy A is not 'a petty and cruel dictator'? Is he incapable of making such a judgment at a distance? If the leader of Columbia honestly believed that the leader of Iran lacked the intellectual courage to answer such questions, how is it that he is just realizing it? And now having made that determination, is the invitation still open?

If Bollinger would not invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back to Columbia again, now convinced that his apprehensions are indeed true, then he is finally as wise today as the Bush Administration has been all along.

July 16, 2007

Nobody is talking about torture at the moment. The meme is dying
because all of the candidates have made their little speeches and
people are satisfied for the moment. In this silence I observe that
really the only interesting debate about torture is one of semantics.
It's rather like racism. Everybody's against it, but nobody can agree
on what it is.

Semantically speaking, there is basically one difference between
torture and interrogation and that is intent. I your intent is to
punish the subject then you are a torturer. If you intend to get
information then you are an inquisitor. Whatever is aimed towards the
goal of interrogation is not torture by definition. The intent doesn't
mean everything, but it means most everything.

The Bush Administration has said flatly, "We don't torture", and the contentiousness of this issue has dissipated over time. I bring it up at this point because while the matter of impeachment has still been on the lips of the opposition and I have been asking point blank what charges would be brought, this was precisely one of the questions in my mind. So if I'm guilty of entrapment, sobeit. But I think I have made a convincing case that the matter of torture has not been one that the opponents of the Bush Administration have been willing to press legally.

Today it is a null issue.

What is anyone going to do about waterboarding? I expect that the Democrats will simply say that they won't do it, and never raise the issue again. And since there is zero momentum on the legal front, there is no reason for the issue to come to the fore again. You would think that the Congress would take this opportunity to actually pass a very specific law during this null period. I doubt they will.

July 13, 2007

There are three words I use frequently that I think most people misinterpret slightly. Being a writer, I enjoy the nuance and fiercely defend my use of them. They are 'retarded', 'fabulous' and 'fantastic'.

Some of us are too young or too un-mechanical to recall how to adjust the timing chain on an automobile. But those of us who've had the pleasure of using a timing stobe know what it means to have one's valves five degrees retarded. With enough of that retardation you'll find that you won't be firing on all cylinders. Which is rather what I mean when I say an idea is retarded. Not that it is irrecoverable.

This brings to mind a couple things. The first is that I learned at a deep level in the 10th grade that people are vessels of ideas, and one should always criticize another's ideas with the assumption that the person can be retuned and refueled with the proper mix. And another is that there are actually degrees of stupidity which cannot be adjusted. I went into that in detail one day. The post was called Three Degrees of Stupidity. In that post I broke out the differences between Fools, Idiots, Stooges, Doofuses, Airheads, Twits, Spazzes, Dolts, Imbeciles, Morons, and Cretins. I would add Schlemeil and Schlomozle but I tend to forget which is which.

Whenever I say that something is fabulous, I mean that it's overly fabulous. It does imply a bit of gay huzzah. Which is fine if you're talking about meal presentation, floral arrangements, furniture or someone's costume jewelry or ideas about the same. But if somebody's asking me a business question and I say that's a fabulous idea... now you know.

Even worse is 'fantastic' as in something akin to fantasy. Although the first image in my mind was the tagline to some baseball marketing, or was it the NBA which was fan-tastic? Fan being short for fanatic, I imagine any idea that is fantastic as some kind of wishful thinking that only people who paint large letters on their bellies would cheer mindlessly for. Rather like the candidacy of Ned Lamont.

Along with the proscribing and replacing of familiar
terms has come a whole new vocabulary employed to deal with violators
of these taboos. A recurring feature of our public life is the stylized
drama played out when some person of significance utters a word like
“faggot” or asserts that black people make good sprinters. The little
pantomime that ensues—condemnation, apology, penance, forgiveness—is
dressed up in a jargon as prescribed and artificial as Oriental court
ritual. The violator is guilty of “hate,” “bigotry,” or “prejudice.” If
he uttered taboo words, they were “epithets” or “slurs.” He did not, in
fact, utter them: he “spouted” or “spewed” them. (There is a Ph.D.
thesis to be written by some student of linguistics about the fondness
for “sp—” verbs in this context.) The noun “epithet” is preferentially
qualified by one of a small set of adjectives now set aside for this
purpose, being hardly ever used elsewhere: “vile,” “abhorrent,”
“repugnant,” “hurtful.”

I have had some significant nits to pick with Derbyshire before but the substance of what he says is correct. I'm generally impressed by his observations, I'm just not always sure his conclusions are correct.

In this piece he rather throws up his hands in the PC air and rather for good reason I suppose as his intent is to show how we've gotten here from there. I sometimes share his frustration. But I do take some comfort that there are those of us who can tell the difference, and that is the connection that must be stressed.

The important thing, as Dr. Johnson said, is to clear our minds of cant. We may say
cheery falsehoods to each other, in contexts where we all understand
that it is only “a mode of talking in Society” that is being employed.
In the interior of our skulls, however, we should not entertain cant
nor any other kind of detectable falsehood.

So there is a right thinking which is compatible with a wrong talking. I can live with that in practice, but here in the blog I will not indulge that. As a writer, it's certainly my obligation to make my intent clear and to illustrate my thinking precisely. Which is I can be rather blunt with people and ideas I don't like.

But wait, there's more. Derbyshire hits on some age old stuff that I was just about to write about, namely the metaphysical disaster that is feminist thought:

Much energy has gone into a
sissifaction of the schools—an effort to get boys behaving like girls.
Fighting—a normal activity among small boys—is now considered an
offense so horrible as to justify suspension and psychiatric
intervention. “Use your words,” our sons are told, when they would
rather, and would be better and healthier, using their fists.
Schoolyard confrontations that would once have been taken to the gym to
be decided with boxing gloves on now end with clenched-teeth apologies
and grudging handshakes under the anxious eye of some senior staff
member, usually female. Repeat offenses are dealt with via
tranquillizing medications.

The
converse thing—getting girls to be more boyish—has, where it has been
attempted, mainly worked to the further disadvantage of boys, as with
the ruthless application of Title IX of the 1972 education law to
destroy athletic opportunities for male students.

The
language of education is even more punctiliously PC than that of
society at large. I have just returned from the annual field day at my
son’s school, the events terminating in a, yes, “tug-o’-peace.” Talking
to my son, I contemptuously called it a “tug-o’-mayhem, massacre, and
blood-spattered death.” He laughed. He liked that. He’s a boy.

That's absolutely delicious. Anyway, Derb gets a big thumbs up from me today. Now I've got a meeting that I've got to attend, then I'm flying back home to vacation. See ya Saturday.

June 21, 2007

Without any sort of fanfare, AT&T Inc. has
started offering a broadband Internet service for $10 a month, cheaper
than any advertised plan.

The
DSL, or digital subscriber line, plan introduced Saturday is part of
the concessions made by AT&T to the Federal Communications
Commission to get its $86 billion acquisition of BellSouth Corp.
approved last December.

The
$10 offer is available to customers in the 22-state AT&T service
region, which includes former BellSouth areas, who have never had
AT&T or BellSouth broadband, spokesman Michael Coe confirmed
Monday. Local phone service and a one-year contract are required. The modem is free.

June 12, 2007

I've been trying to find out all day what kind of watch the president wears. For one thing, I've been in the market for one myself and I wondered if I might have the same kind. Actually, the Bremont watch has caught my fancy thanks to Bear Grylls. But I can't afford that kind of luxury. Then it turns out, according to those who are spinning this funny story, that he wears a $50 Timex. What a letdown.

So here's my question that I haven't heard anybody answer. Why was he shaking with both hands? If GW Bush is a proper right-handed American, he should be wearing his watch on his left hand. Furthermore he should be shaking hands with his right. So how does an erstwhile thief get to his left hand? His personal space is a little bit to small for me. I'd give high fives with both hands, but not have a lot of people grabbing on my arms. With this kind of crowd, he should be throwing T-shirts.

June 09, 2007

Depending upon your revulsion to the prior two axioms, you're probably on one side of a continuing debate in America about the fate of blackfolks. I am heir to this annoyingly perennial race debate, so I'm part of the problem. But at least I'll admit the fetish.

For those of you living in reality, Paris Hilton, idle rich heiress with nice boobs, was busted for drunk driving or some such violation of probation having to do with such world historical evil as suspended drivers' licenses. She was sentenced to serve some jail time, which made national headlines in the Rikki Lake Parallel Universe. In close proximity to that dimension of space-time, exist the the racial theorists who momentarily leaped for joy that some relative to The Man was getting stuck. However due to a high priced legal trick, Hilton was released from jail, chipped and put under house arrest instead. This, naturally tripped the Sharpton alert which resulted in a bloviate chorus of whines from here,here, here,here, and here.

Within a day or two, another judge sent her back to the slam, and at the current moment, I think she's out having served a total of three days. I can't be sure of this because I'm rather loathe to tune into the Entertainment Tonight Universe. But at long last, last night came a sentence of wisdom that puts all the blabber to rest - in theory anyway. You know how it is when little dogs start yapping and chasing their tails.

"We needed bed space for real criminals".

Well duh. Considering how many of the thousands of jail cells are occupied by illegal aliens, 34,000 at last count in California, this would seem to be a truism. So I'm please to offer the following counter-theory to shutup the mealy mouthed race chasers who seem so put out but this excess of 'white privilege'.

It ain't white privilege that busted Paris Hilton out of jail, it was citizenship privilege. If it weren't for all those illegal immigrants crowding up the California penal system, we would have plenty more room for petty offenders like Paris Hilton, and the the 'war on at-risk black youth' aka those named 'Shaniqua' who are otherwise presumed not to get a break because they're not blonde, rich and hot crotched.

I say deport all the illegals so we can throw more Americans in jail. Starting with everyone on Sharpton's side on this melodrama. They can't blog from jail can they?

June 07, 2007

Something popped up on the Medved show the other day which was the anniversary of the 6 Day War. He handled the caller nicely when asked about the fragging of the USS Liberty. I don't think he handled the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy very well.

Here's the Old School position.

I make a distinction between homosexuality and a gay lifestyle. One is manufacturing the other is marketing. As I said before, I'm not gay-friendly, but I'm not anti-homosexuality. The difficulty this presents of course is with regard to gay activism which is not so concerned with the rights of homosexuals as they are with socially engineering the nation towards becoming gay-friendly. I think the country is friendly enough.

The problem with being a social conservative is really the same as being a gay activist, you employ clever rhetoric to convince people who ought not to care, to care too much - so that the question of caring becomes political. Since I am neither I rather enjoy bashing their overproductions, and naturally they say something's wrong with me. But there's nothing wrong with me, I simply don't believe in re-engineering social standing through political activism. It always makes for bad law.

June 06, 2007

Barack Obama may or may not be getting props for stating the obvious, but it appears that he's now manipulating another issue into his court. In other word's he's engaging in rhetorical patronage.

What he did say:

"If you had gone to any street corner in Chicago or Baton Rouge or
Hampton -- you would have found the same young men and women without
hope, without miracles and without a sense of destiny other than life
on the edge."

What he didn't say:

I want those people to be my constituency and I want to fight for them. I pledge to do something about that.

What he can't say but implies

My candidacy represents, hope, miracles and a sense of destiny for black other than life on the edge.

This is rhetorical patronage, and black partisans have a habit of falling over themselves to get big heaping helpings of it. Obama is not just smart, he's brilliant and crafty as hell. This is the moment he has stolen the spot from Howard Dean.

But let me just remind you of what's real and what's not as I said four years ago:

Rhetorical Patronage

I challenge anyone to show exactly what it is that the Democrats have
done for African Americans that they haven't done for everyone else.
Whatever you find, I will bet my nickel that it doesn't get any larger
than a quarter of a billion in any one program out of the Federal
budget. But what the Democrats do that the Republicans don't is insure
that they say a lot of nice things about blackfolks. The dirty little
secret is that this covers a lot of what the black electorate will
settle for. If
you ask someone who hates the idea of Black Republicans what it is that
the Democrats will give blacks that the Republicans won't, it will all
come down to warm and fuzzies. Try it. Get them to name programs
when they disagree. Materially, most folks are hard pressed to talk
about black patronage in dollars and cents. But they know what kind of
rhetoric they like. Ask how much federal money goes to support HBCUs.
Nobody knows. Ask what kind of support Affirmative Action should get
and you'll hear a litany of legalese words, qualifications, provisos,
tests, and other verbal requirements. What a twist of fate! It's not
all about the Benjamins.

I haven't heard from Kevin Drum or any of the thoughtful lefties and progressives I read where Obama has scored any home runs with his ideas on Education and Health Care. So far, there is no there there. He is just spewing generality and basking in the rare glow of black electability. Sooner or later he's going to have to put some oomph behind that rhetoric.

But wait, I almost forgot. Nobody on the street corners of Chicago, Baton Rouge or Hampton has any wherewithal to hold Obama's feet to the fire. Besides, he didn't offer hope or miracles, he's just feeling people's pain.

On the news that I've been attached to the Rsspect Project, I found some interesting new blackified blogs. In Black in Business (hmm, why do you think I went there first?) we encounter the old Loving question:

He somehow felt this black white talk was upsetting because he married
white. Now we are brothers and have always been close but I have to
stop being my self because he has a white wife? This point to the
tension black-white marriages can cause in families. It is becoming
more and more normal. I found a site that puts humor in it. Check it
out. To my little brother, I love you but that will not stop me from
kicking your ass is you get upset over nothing again.

'Married White', now that's a phrase with legs.

Here in the Old School we have no particular difficulty with jungle fever. We neither encourage or discourage it. We only note with raised eyebrows that it takes a little extra gumption to handle the raised eyebrows.

Coming up in California, I never thought that the big deal was such a big deal. I basically had my first white girlfriend about the very same year I went to my first white school, so the question was pretty much settled in 1974 as to capability. But there is certainly an aesthetic debate which is worth engaging at the level of 'boys & girls', ie dating and sex.

As a rule, I don't much talk about dating and sex, and generally regard the entire dating and sex industry to be a huge luxurious waste of time. To the extent that America retains an ample sample of hardheaded highly functional individuals and collectives which attend to the business of the nation, and they are not falling off, by and large, then we can afford that huge luxurious waste of time. You won't catch me holding a picket sign outside of MTV headquarters but I don't let my kids watch it. So I basically don't care about people's dating and sex issues and problems and trends and all that rot. Let us recall Cobb's rule #2:

There is Marriage and there is everything else.

So how much does the color inflect the trajectory of the marriage. Well that depends entirely upon whether it is a good marriage. People try to knock the institution simply because they are incapable of handling its demands. That's kinda funny now that I think about it. How many people think that their college degrees are more important than their marital status. Damn, this is a big society. We can afford that too. Of course we conservatives remain amazed that things hold together, that's why we defend core principles to the bone. If we lost every university, we'd be better off than if we lost every marriage. The loss of the latter would send us more quickly to ape-like status than the loss of the former. But let me not rag on higher education. The point is that a good marriage can survive what have now become the trifles of class three racism.

I think it's important to recognize that the most essential principle that enabled the greatest threat to black progress and freedom has been eliminated. The phrase "We don't want them in our schools" has no social resonance today. The idea that blacks and whites shouldn't marry is essentially the complaint of (ahem) unattractive people who are looking for a racial lock on some quarter of the dating scene. Them and the Klan are equally weak. Even so, I don't think that there is anything socially superior or significant about an interracial marriage. I don't look at a black and white couple and say, my my how far we've come. It's a trailing indicator.

There are class issues and religious issues and regional issues, but these have always been the case in marriage since the days of King Arthur and before. Nothing new in that.

May 16, 2007

I can say that I am one of those millions of Americans whose life was pretty much untouched by the life of Jerry Falwell and unmoved by his death. God hasn't changed. My church hasn't changed. My faith hasn't changed. I'm really going to have to read about what people thought to even begin to have an opinion.

In that, I think of Boris Yeltsin who also recently met with his demise. These individuals doubtless had historical roles to play, but they largely existed on the periphery of my political vision. I didn't attribute as much to them as I think others did.

So all I can say is that this is one Conservative Christian that is not weeping and wailing, although every man's death diminishes me.

The story is everywhere that Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York and undisputed heavyweight kingpin of information science is socking away 1 billion dollars (Dr Evil) for a presidential campaign. I don't ever want to be in the position we are in today with GWBush, which is to say, I want no interesting presidents in office based on the assumptions that it would be cool to have this kinda guy in for a change. Real global emergencies emerge and you want somebody who is prepared to handle the worst, period.

That said, it would be cool to have this kinda guy in for a change.

I haven't followed up, but Bloomberg promised the city of New York a call center paradigm for city government. Which is to say he took some of the best customer service principles from private industry and applied them to the municipality. Got a pothole? Call the City and you'll get a case number and the action request is put into a database. You can call anytime to check up on the status of your complaint, and they will call you back when the problem is solved. In the meantime city managers are looking at the number of calls, logging times to completion and being graded on objective performance measurements. As familiar as this scenario is to all of us consumers, it had never been attempted on that scale before Bloomberg. Amazing.

Bloomberg's own corporate story is legend, especially in my industry. I've long been an admirer even back to the days when he first took on Wall Street and revolutionized trading with his proprietary information network. I've got to get his bio if there's one out there. Like Walter Wriston, Bloomberg was a great innovator in global finance and information technology. He's the man I would pick to run Homeland Security. I guarantee you there would be no silos.

Bloomberg the company had an extraordinary type A accelerated work ethic. He liked people ultra competitive with unleashed personalities. It could be bruising. I must admit, especially now at this particular inflection of my career, that I regret not making the effort to go and work for Bloomberg. I was never invited, unlike for Microsoft and Wal Mart IT, but I should have given it a shot.

Anyway. I hold out hope for heroes and outsized, non-tap dancing personalities in politics. Right now only Senator Thompson has that kind of look and feel. I expect that perhaps he will get tapped for a fine cabinet position. And so too for Bloomberg. But President? I haven't seen a real President since Ronald Reagan, and I hated him during his first term.

May 09, 2007

"As for the one Mormon running for office, those that really believe in
God will defeat him anyways. So, don't worry about that, that's a
temporary situation." -- Al Sharpton

Hoo boy. Here we go. But what the heck is that supposed to mean anyway?

It's not as if Sharpton is anybody's Sister Souljah but he's about to get his head handed to him one way or another. Still, I don't see what difference it makes. It's an opportunity for Romney to make a defensive fool out of himself because up until this point he's been Mr. Gameshow Host, the Stepford candidate. But it does perhaps once and for all bring the Mormon question out of the closet. Hugh Hewitt will be on fire, I suspect.

Still, it's Sharpton. What are you going to do? Moreover what should you do?

May 08, 2007

I've never been one to tell French jokes as symbolic of much beyond the level of an episode of Blackadder. But there are a putative number of reactionaries who find it convenient to call them 'surrender monkeys'. All of them are thinking twice today as the inevitability of a Sarkozy administration makes its presence felt in France, and in Europe.

I cannot recall there ever being, in my lifetime, a French President that could be seen as aligned with things I find appealing about conservatism. Sure people called Le Pen right-wing, but was he conservative? Not the way we think about conservatism. I learned today that President Bush never even really had a relationship with Chirac. Considering their behavior during the Islamic riots in Paris, it's no wonder.

When I was in Paris, some dozen or so years ago, I witnessed the most astounding sight. It was a parade of telecommunications workers on strike. I had never seen a demonstration so well organized in the US, that's why I tend to want to call it a parade. They had bands, they walked in unison, cheered in unison and stopped all traffic. Despite all of the agitation inherent, there were no police really doing anything. People stood on the sidewalks in bunches and clumps just watching them go by as if it were the most natural thing. People seemed perfectly ready to adjust their lives for as long as it took for the unions to get their way. My cousin told me about transit strikes and the like. In Paris, they're unstoppable.

I also noticed something else about the strikers. They were all very middle class looking. Some were in uniform. Plenty of them were chubby. In Pasadena, we have the Doo Dah Parade. It is a parody of Pasadena's quite serious Tournament of Roses. The Doo Dah is quite notorious for the its presentation of the synchronized breifcase drill team. I got some of that feeling on that day in Paris. Silly, scary and somewhat awe inspiring all at the same time. Those Frenchies know how to protest, for some of them it must be a profession. I am reminded of that professionalism every time I see a ragtag protest in the States. Why not have agencies and outsource strikers and demonstrators, have some people who know how to chant, get picket signs done by pros?

Anyway, the time for the foolishness of the 35 hour workweek is about to end. Sarkozy is in the house. But much more importantly he strikes a strong chord for liberty and he is serious about engaging the political battle against the Islamist threat. This is classic conservative talk and as Wretchard notes, the Left should be embarrassed by their failure on this matter:

Question: What do you think of polygamy?

Answer: I respect all cultures throughout the world, but so that it is
quite clear: if I am elected President of the Republic, I will not accept
women being treated as inferior to men. The French Republic holds these
values: respect for women, equality between men and women. Nobody has the
right to hold a prisoner, even within his own family. I say it clearly, that
polygamy is prohibited in the territory of the French Republic. I will fight
against female genital mutilation and those who do not wish to understand that
the values of the French Republic include freedom for women, the dignity of
women, respect for women -- they do not have any reason to be in France. If
our laws are not respected and if one does not wish to understand our values,
if one does not wish to learn French, then one does not have any reason to be
on French territory.

April 29, 2007

The funny thing about guns is that you could never know that there's anything funny about guns if you only listen to the people who want to outlaw them.

You would never know there's anything fun, or responsible or intelligent about guns unless there was a fun, responsible and intelligent gun culture. That gun culture would disappear or go underground leaving laymen even more clueless, if guns were banned in America. This is the consequence of the old cliche that if you outlaw guns, the only people who will own them are outlaws. This kind of disappearance of knowledge happens. It's a case of 'the old man died with the recipe' and it can happen in any sort of law-abiding culture when the law prohibits.

Of course the people most vulnerable to the destruction of knowledge are those who have no experience in the subject matter. I don't think it takes a PhD to recognize that most people who oppose the ownership of guns for private citizens are private citizens who have never owned or fired one.

I support the ownership of guns as a logical consequence of my principly held belief that human beings have the right to make life of death decisions. I also believe that only the proper training with guns will make people responsible with them. But we know that a large plurality is not properly trained. The implication is that there are indeed gun nuts, and nuts with guns. But so there are too with automobiles. Training hasn't stopped drunk drivers.

We may have drunk drivers, because drinking is legal and driving is legal. So there is a presumption out there that some people are responsible enough to buy, own and use alcohol. The same presumption holds for automobiles. And our legal system properly defends our liberty and encourages responsibility by regulating cars and alcohol as well as specifying punishments for their abuse. The same is true with guns, as it should be.

Oh. OK so here's the real funny thing. Imagine that through gun control, we lost the fun, responsible and intelligent gun culture, rather in the same way we lost sharecropping and migrant farming culture. Wouldn't it be fascinating to require immigrants to "do the jobs Americans won't do"?

April 23, 2007

The Urban League's 'State of Black America' report paints a (hmm let me guess) dire picture and makes proposals for solutions. I have to say this is getting tired. Over at the Washington Post, folks in the comment section are spewing big time. Take this one for example:

What about 70 of all black kids being our of wedlock? It appears the blackshave plenty of time being on welfare and getting money from drugs and stealingto keep busy reproducing. And what about the nationwide poor performance ofblack kids in schools at every level? They cant say it is discrimination when itaffects every school district in the US -- not just DC. And what about reportafter report saying that historically black colleges and universities being nothingmore than extension of high school with poor accademic standards and poorquality teachers? Maybe these schools should be renamed historially badcolleges and universities as that description fits them to a T. And what aboutmost of the inmates in prison being black? Does that tell you something aboutthe moral fiber of blacks? It sure speaks a lot about the decline of blacks in asociety where every other racial group exxept for blacks have pulledthemseleves up and moved into main stream society. Lets face it, in my mindthe blacks have declined in almost every quality measure of life in the US. Andthey did it themselves.

Obviously, you can expect people to be vehement in their assertions that it is racist to talk about all black people in such negative and general terms. But that criticism not-so-obviously, goes both ways. The Urban League is not making a report about the state of 'some of' Black America, but presumes to speak for all of us. Note with irony.

The Washington Post, for its role in this, allows everyone who reads the story and ventures to the comment section to 'request removal' of comments you deem offensive. I picked the one above because I'm guessing that it won't last long.

I recall what my mother and yours used to tell me: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.

April 21, 2007

I've been mostly deeply reflective on the whole Virginia Tech story,
but I swear to god it's not going to keep me up until 3 in the morning
tonight. So in a more cranky mood I'm going to pick up on the meme of
self-defense.

A lot of poeple, like those who hang out at Yglesias (not the
Spanish chruch, the churlishly prolific liberal pundit), are calling
Malkin an idiot. Being an optimist, I'd say they're half right but for
the wrong reason. Malkin says students should be armed. I think they
shouldn't be because I think that's paranoid. I think that the cops
should be a lot more functional than they've been considering that
among many better police departments there exists a post-Columbine
rules of engagement regime. If we leave the matter simply to
'self-defense' or 'fighting back' we get to the heart of the
conservative position which is that we expect people to have some
intestinal fortitude. That means confronting people who would dare step
so far out of line. I think we on the right are all a bit upset that
Jack Bauer was nowhere to be found and we let Cho do to his face what
the good guys should have. Somebody should have put Cho down, and the fact that nobody did makes us all impotent.

The important question to the conservative mind is whether that
impotence is voluntary. I think we all know how Kim du Toit would
react, but there's wisdom behind that reaction as well and this is not
a new subject. What is not going on in the conservative mind is a calculation about
relative victimhood. It is unimaginable that anyone on the Right would
suggest (well beside Pat Robertson) that America brought 9/11 upon
itself. We are interested in doing what can be done. Better to be, one part hero and three parts fool than one part wise man and three parts target.

March 13, 2007

While I acknowledge that something is amiss with regards to the non-prosecution of Sandy Berger, I've not made much of a big deal about it. In the back of my head, I've always suspected that he has been a very successful blackmailer. Tigerhawk's speculation mirrors my speculation:

My rank speculation is that Sandy Berger had information which would
have made his trial even more painful for the Bush administration than
for, well, Berger. I have no idea what that information would have
been, except perhaps more detailed evidence that some Clintonite
somewhere "warned" the Bush administration about al Qaeda or the
specific tactics deployed on 9/11. Or perhaps Berger's defense would
have required that the administration compromise information of current
tactical or intelligence value, in which case the trial of Sandy Berger
would have hurt the United States. Either way, it seems to me silly to
complain about Libby's treatment compared to Berger's without knowing
why we let Berger off with the equivalent of after-school detention.

The next question of course is, why don't we know?
This is a mystery that begs for investigation by the best reporters in
the Washington press corps. That our vaunted mainstream media has
failed to uncover the story of Berger's absurd sentencing reflects very
poorly on their ambition, their competence, or their objectivity.

Berger will go to his grave with the secrets intact, unless and until he is approached by the next Democrat president needing to deal dirt retroactively on Bush.

January 12, 2007

This week has been quite a week for Somalia. The Ethiopians, our pals, have swept through with their regular army and routed a fledgling Islamist proto-government. Interestingly enough, the word was that for the short few months that the Islamist ran things in Mog, the warlords were quieted and the streets were clear of the normal gang warfare. Even though the presence of Islamicists is not a necesary condition for AQ to flourish, the Ethiopians saw that double threat the same way we do in America. The news is, apparently, that we have finally killed the AQ operative responsible for the Kenyan Embassy bombing. That would be very good news.

December 24, 2006

A thoughtful reader sent me email on a controversy about Black Santa. I have to say that's a subject that have very close to zero interest for me. Of all the black things to be, a black Santa would be fairly low on the totem pole.

About 9 years ago, when I first moved back to California, I couldn't wait to have my first Christmas party in my new place. I found the lyrics to every Christmas carol I could find as well as all of the midi files I could download from the web. (There were almost no MP3s in those days). So I duplicated the songbooks and prepared everyone to sing. I got everybody Santa hats, so we were all black Santas. And since then I've always honored the tradition of wearing a Santa hat out in public during the holiday season. (Dang, I gotta do that today!) That's enough for me.

But one more thing I did was load up on some Christmas trivia which included information about the origin of St. Nick and his assistant, Black Peter. Now I originally recall Black Peter from one of the many books by Ishmael Reed that I read as I approached liberation theology, but the details are rather obscure. Depending on where you read your sources, Peter was the one who carried that big bag of gifts for Father Christmas, or he was the one who put a lump of coal in your stocking if you pouted or wasn't good. Therefore he was either the force for materialistic beneficence or materialistic humiliation. Either way his was the actual hand of justice while St. Nick presided over the entire affair being.. well rather saintly.

Now back in the days when I was not attempting to be a paragon of righteousness for the benefit of my own children's moral upbringing and my wife's standing in the community, I had plenty of trickster up my sleeve. So a character the likes of Black Peter would immediately appeal to the Bugs Bunny in me, which was comparatively larger in the days of Louisiana Red than it is now. So it is very likely that rather than doing something almost completely brain dead as changing the skin color of Santa for the self-esteem of thoughtless minorities, I would have invested in the more subversive and historically accurate manifestations of Black Peter. In fact, if I were of the Progressive ilk, bound and determined to make a mockery of the less profound aspects of this national holiday, I would find in the legend of Black Peter, a goldmine of possibilities.

Alas, I find it just as amusing to have at this my 45th Christmas an artificial tree which is shorter than I for the first time ever. The larger the spirit, the less important the symbols. So I'll let whomever do whatever with the legends and colors, frimfram sauce and chifafa on the side. My inner Who is singing dahoo dory all the same.

December 20, 2006

A well-meaning person suggested that it's not a good idea for me to link to this blog from Wikipedia. I replied:

I don't know what to tell you, I'm a primary source. I'm an eyewitness.
It happened in my house. I haven't written a book, I've written a blog.
I'm in a situation in which some reporter interviews me and the
newspaper article is considered more credible than my own memory, even
when they get subtle details incorrect. I imagine that if I were to
write a book about Kwanzaa, that would be self-promotion. People will
just have to read the material I present and judge for themselves, but
there is no way the picture is complete without the detail I provide.

It's a queer situation in that being a primary source is never quite useful as one might think. I mean if it weren't for Juan Williams we would not have Eyes on the Prize. So which comes first, the interviewer or the interviewee? I leave that question for journalism students. As you see, I'm a blogger and my mind is already made up. I know what I know and I self-represent. I am, by dint of my experience and the context of my life, biased and informed. You can't get one without the other. While I recognize and respect the need for Wikipedia to appear unbiased as a reference, I cannot help but notice how this need shapes what is considered relevant. It seems to me that the best history and anthropology seeks to restore context, but I'm not going to wait for some research student's attempts try to breathe life into an otherwise bloodless text 50 years after I'm dead.

I can recall a huge debate I had several years ago with David Horowitz over in Salon before he got Front Page. We were discussing the implications of the LA Riots. I said something then that I regret now. I told him that his interpretations were so off-base that I could care less if he never got it right. It was a very disrespectful dismissal and something my arrogance had done before and would replicate again. Despite our differences, Horowitz acknowledged my persuasiveness and quality as a writer and even went on to suggest that I should apply for my own grants from Sciafe. I dismissed the notion but remembered the compliment. I don't feel particularly bad about my disagreement with Horowitz, but what I would do differently today is be more serious about my concern for his knowledge. This is something I say I officially learned this year but has been a lesson a long time coming. One should always pay attention to the quality of one's enemies, which is to say one should never be so lazy as to allow those opposed to you believe lies when the truth is at your disposal.

It is in this spirit that I defend Kwanzaa. It is in this spirit that I represent as a black man. I never say that what I know is something you can't understand, because it always implies that I'm either incapable or unwilling to explain.

That's not to say that ignorant people don't try my patience or that dainty folks annoy me with their unwillingness to face ugly facts. It is to say that I make an honest effort, even if sometimes I repeat myself. It's important enough for me to be interested, therefore it's important enough for me to make clear.

I cannot know, nor will I presume to know exactly which Strunk or White is the perfect delivery vehicle for what the Maitres D'Wikipedia prefer. I'm not interested to know. In fact my line is quite clear. I will give you what I know to be true in my own words. I leave the metadata to others.

December 05, 2006

I've been focusing on race for a few days, just recycling some old content and didn't even realize that the Supreme Court was reviewing integration programs. I agree with the NYT that it seems unlikely that the Court is going to let such integration programs stand.

The question before the court is what it is, but the question before the country that I think ought to be discussed is how long are we going to allow race stand singularly as a proxy for stereotypical matters? That cannot be addressed without answering how long and in which specific instances are the stereotypes true? Heavy freight.

In Seattle and in Louisville, where these cases originate, it may very well be the case that black = poor, undereducated, isolated from the mainstream in most cases. And that isolation from the mainstream conversely means that white families in the mainstream will use the system to their advantage. Nobody believes in 'diversity' of strong and weak when it comes to the education of their children or the size of their paycheck. Everybody wants better. So you can expect squeaky wheels on the boundaries. Those who get edged out who want better will complain. And so white parents have squeaked their way up to the Supreme Court, uncomfortable with the racial roles assigned to them and their children.

The simple fact of the matter is that ultimately people will not be satisfied with any imposed racial balance. People simply will want to jump out of the boxes assigned to them.

But is that's what's going on here? Are the racial proxies in the same place they were when Brown was established? If they are then race needn't be the proxy, because the poverty and isolation will speak for itself. If there is a question of racial discrimination in physical mobility then it should be clear. I'm not sure that it could be. If there is no other case that could be made for the distinction of these children then integration simply for the sake of racial variety seems would be a very empty gesture.

This therefore may very well be the litmus test for the reasonableness of public institutions getting into the 'diversity' business, with the razor being the question of racialism we just discussed. We might be able to pretend that there are no controversial differences between the races, but forcefully integrating or segregating belies that premise. The very existence of a program means we need race to be a real proxy for something worthy of mixing or matching.Otherwise why bother? Somebody is going to have to say, we must integrate or segregate because if we don't some folks are going to have too much x, and somebody else is going to have too little. But x can't simply be 'racial integration' or 'racial segregation'.

We cannot long afford to allow skin color to become ossified into race, and racial stereotypes become permanent associations along the lines defined by the legacy of white supremacy or any scheme. We have lived with that long enough. We the People need to declare who we are by common and rational terms, bit by bit, and quit expecting everyone to swallow that same old racial diet.

So if Conservatives do what they're expected which is to deracinate the arms of the state even while We the People don't want to, we will be forced to deal a very unexpected end. A loud faction is going to be telling us exactly what race mixing is supposed to mean. And that summary definition will very likely be completely out of step with the people of Seattle and Louisville. That is why it has come to this.

Chances are, that a good portion of hiphop will be conflated with black culture and blackfolks in general will be scapegoated by the idiocy of a few. Sauce for the goose, I suppose, considering all the jawjacking of the past week. Whitefolks can't stand blackfolks because blackfolks get a way with murder, and vice-versa. Can't we all just get along?